46 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



to her, and France would in the end be considered as a natural 

 enemy. I am persuaded, she has wisdom enough to see it in its true 

 light 



No. 11. 1782, January 8: Extract from Report of a Committee of 

 Congress, consisting of Mr. Lovell, Mr. Carroll, and Mr. Madison, 

 to which had been referred certain papers relative to the -fisheries 

 and Proceedings in Congress in regard thereto on 22nd January 

 and 20th August, 1782. 



******* 



Another claim is the common right of the United States to take 

 fish in the North American seas, and particularly on the banks of 

 Newfoundland. With respect to this object, the said ministers are 

 instructed to consider and contend for it, as described in the instruc- 

 tions relative to a treaty of commerce, given to John Adams on 

 29 the twenty-ninth of September, 1779, as equally desired and ex- 

 pected by Congress with any of the other claims not made 

 ultimata in the instructions given to the ministers plenipotentiary 

 for negotiating a peace on the day of last, and are therein 



referred to as objects of the desires and expectations of Congress. 

 They are also instructed to observe to his most Christian majesty 

 with respect to this claim, that it does not extend to any parts of the 

 sea lying within three leagues of the shores held by Great Britain or 

 any other nation. That under this limitation it is conceived by Con- 

 gress, a common right of taking fish cannot be denied to them without 

 a manifest violation of the freedom of the seas, as established by the 

 law of nations, and the dictates of reason; according to both which 

 the use of the sea, except such parts thereof as lie in the vicinity of 

 the shore, and are deemed appurtenant thereto, is common to all 

 nations, those only excepted who have either by positive convention, 

 or by long and silent acquiescence under exclusion, renounced that 

 common right; that neither of these exceptions militate against the 

 claim of the United States, since it does not extend to the vicinity of 

 the shore, and since they are so far from having either expressly or 

 tacitly renounced their right, that they were prior to the war, though 

 indeed not in the character of an independent nation, in the constant, 

 and even during the war, in the occasional exercise of it; that 

 although a greater space than three leagues has in some instances 

 been, both by publick treaties and by custom, annexed to the shore 

 as part of the same dominion, yet, as it is the present aim of the mari- 

 time powers to circumscribe, as far as reason will justify, all exclusive 

 pretensions to the sea, and as that is the distance specified in a treaty 

 to which both Great Britain and his majesty are parties, and which 

 relates to the very object in question, it was supposed that no other 

 distance could, in the present case, be more properly assumed ; that 

 if a greater or an indefinite distance should be alleged to be appur- 

 tenant by the law of nations to the shore, it may be answered, that 

 the fisheries in question, even those on the banks of Newfoundland, 

 being of so vast an extent, might with much greater reason be deemed 

 appurtenant to the whole continent of North America than to the 

 inconsiderable portion of it held by Great Britain; that Congress 

 expect, with greater assurance, the concurrence of his majesty in these 



